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From: owner- Can anyone shed light on this? Perhaps we could order a nightlight from There is really no hope of reproducing this. I have spent some time thinking about
how we might improve our ‘critical error recovery’ though. The worst part about this is that the
voter walked away without having their vote counted. We have to prevent this at all costs. Lets assume the analysis below is accurate (it sounds pretty
plausible). Here are a few concrete
improvements to the software that could help: (1) We should
write a ‘token’ to nonvolatile storage (flash) when we accept a
voter card. When the voter casts
their ballot, we delete the token.
At power up, the software checks for the token and knows we crashed (for
whatever reason) during voting if one is there. Then we could log the event more
accurately. We could also force pollworker intervention when the unit comes back up, so
humans are aware of the problem at the point that it happens. (2) At power up,
right now we just unilaterally eject an inserted card without fanfare and
without even reading it. This isn’t
good enough. We should read the
card, log that there was a card in the machine at boot, and log the details of
the card. Then we should pop up an
error message and require pollworker intervention. Ideally we would include some audio clues that a pollworker could hear as well, but alas the current
internal speaker isn’t up to the task. If we had something like the above, then at least the pollworkers would have known about the problem and could
have issued the voter a new card and asked her to vote again. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Schmidt, Connie, ELC"
<Connie.Schmidt@jocoks.com> To: "'Lesley Thompson (earthlink)'"
<lesley@dieboldes.com> Sent: Subject: AVTS/BS 4.1.11/WinCE 2.1.2 soft reboot? > Lesley, > > We have some questions that I hope you can find answers. > > Here is the scenario: > > A voter inserted their voter card in a touchscreen. Somehow the voter card > was ejected without the cast ballot being pushed...immediately
after the > machine audit tape indicates that the machine was rebooted -
however, the > machine was never turned off and on. The Supervising Judge (SJ) has the only key > and has instructions to not turn the machines off if there is a
reported > problem. They know to
just close the lid and call our office.
That > location has had several of the problem machines this time and the
SJ has > been following those instructions. > > Our internal brainstorming leads us to this conclusion. Because of the voter receipt and the date and time stamp in ESM for the computerized voter > checkin we are able to determine which voter experienced this
problem. It > is an elderly voter - we telephoned the voter to do a "voter
satisfaction > survey" - they loved the system and placed their voter card
in the plastic > container and received their "I Voted" sticker on the
way out. This leads us to believe that the voter's ballot appeared on the screen
- the precinct > was validated to the voter receipt by the machine judge and the
voter > receipt was placed in the brown envelope for that voting machine. Sometime > during voting the machine did an internal reboot and ejected the
voter card > to the voter. The
voter is elderly and simply took the card and placed it > in the container and left. The machine log indicates that the vote was not > cast and that the machine was turned back on. The SJ did not open the > swinging door and turn the machine off and on. I am concerned about this - > can you check with your software folks and get an answer for
us. This > appears to be something like a soft reboot happening within the
machine > which triggers the voter card to eject just like physically
turning the > machine off and on or pushing the Cast Ballot button. As you will recall, > we had several instances in August where the machine ejected the
voter card > after the voter voted for just one candidate. We understand that this > problem was also reported by other jurisdictions in their
September > primaries. > > We need your assistance to problem solve this one. > > Thanks..Connie > |